Wavertonwood

What you are describing seems to be a ITunes bug for a long time. There seems to be a manual fix where you click the box to make the album as a compilation, then unclick the compilation selection, and in this case click again (it’s a great album you’ve chosen!). This should get all the songs in one album. Also for compilations I put the Album Artist as Various and the Artist field as the correct band/artists. I have given up trying to fix every album in my library where all the meta data is the same but Itunes splits at least one track into a separate album. My other bugbear is ITunes mobile app overwriting the album art with artwork from a podcast I subscribe to.

Thanks for the reply. It doesn’t happen when I am listening to the tracks on the MacBook Air (using a USB dac) and when played to Sonos1 via AirPlay. The Power Adapter setttings are set to 15mins to turn the display off. Nothing else is set around the 7min mark.

A recent issue has cropped up whilst using Apple AirPlay. Any song longer than 7mins, the track goes silent at the 7min mark but the song appears to keep playing according to the time counter. I can get the track to produce sound again by pausing it and rewinding to just before the 7min cut off and press play. The track then plays as normal. It happens with a variety of source files AAC, ALAC, MP3. The files are locally stored on an external hard drive connected to a MacBook Air. Apple Music Player sends the track, via AirPlay, to a Apple TV with a optical output to KEF LS50s. I have restarted every link in the chain and also checked for updates but it still happens.

Apple Support called me back today. They confirmed it is a general issue with the Apple Music / AirPlay software affecting numerous users. They said it should be fixed in their next update. Hopefully that’s sooner rather than later.

I am having a similar issue with playcounts & last played not updating. After a few hours with Apple Support the problem appears to be isolated to AirPlay playing to third party speakers (e.g. Sonos or Naim). When the same songs are played on my MacBook speakers or by Airplay to Apple TV (to KEF LS50) the problem doesn’t occur. Apple want me to do more tests, screenshots and log files. Hopefully they’ll get to the root of the issue soon.

Also sent feedback to Apple.

Will miss the pidcast. Looked forward to it ever week. Thanks Kirk and Doug.

I was listening to the a podcast, from the Next Track team, on the future of iTunes. The discussion made sense to me about the future and hopefully it comes to pass. Particularly on the music downloads. My usage of iTunes is a just music player, I don't use Apple Music, the store or the iCloud Match service. Just regular ALAC files to playback (mostly ripped from CD). At present I am a satisfied customer/user of iTunes and it does everything I need (e.g. Airplay to speakers). However the podcast got me thinking "What if there was a dramatic change that meant iTunes went pure streaming for Music?". The question I cannot seem to find on the web is there an alternative media player that could access the the .itl library file if the worse would come to the worse that would keep the original library information such as artwork, play counts etc. and also allows Airplay?

Hopefully somebody can assist with this small but annoying bug. Here is the background: I have an iPhone 8 that I sync to my iTunes library on a daily basis. The iPhone 8 syncs to a single dynamic playlist that I have on my iTunes,. The iTunes is on a MacBook Air. The dynamic playlist is set to choose 1,200 of my least often played songs (I like to listen on shuffle at work). The iPhone is deliberately set to sync just this single playlist only and I have no other albums / artists / playlist syncing with the iPhone. My MacBook Air and iPhone both have the iTunes Store disabled, I don't use Apple Music or Apple Match. No other Apple device syncs with the two devices mentioned above. The Problem: When I set the iPhone to play the playlist at work three songs/tracks appear in the iPhone playlist that are not included on MacBook Air dynamic playlist. I always chose the Downloaded Music section of the iPhone's iTunes App when playing the playlist and the iPhone in question does not have internet or network access at my workplace (airplane mode effectively). The incorrect tracks usually appear as the top three tracks on the playlist, when shown on the iPhone. I regularly delete the tracks from the iPhone but they appear after every Sync. It always seems to be the same three particular tracks. These songs have a couple of things in common: they were purchased from iTunes originally, they don't have DRM and their library play count means they should not be picked up in the least often played filter. I have been through the Sync options windows (that is shown when you dock the iPhone for it to sync) and these tracks or artists are definatley not ticked/selected. I suspect it is something to do with the iCloud monkeying around with my iTunes or iPhone in the background that causes the problem but I cannot isolate the cause. If some wise person can help removing this reoccurring problem it would be much appreciated.